Biostar.com: A StackExchange engine for Bioinformatics

Just In Case You Don't Know:

Biostar is a site running the StackExchange engine (the same engine used by http://stackoverflow.com). The site's focus is bioinformatics, computational genomics and biological data analysis(...)No question is too trivial or too "newbie". Please look around to see if your question has already been asked (and maybe even answered!) before you ask. But if you end up asking a question that has been asked before, that is OK and deliberately allowed. Other users will hopefully edit in links to related or similar questions to help future visitors find their way..

Bio-Twitters, Unite !

If your a scientist, a bioinformatician, etc... join the scientific community of the biotwitters on http://twitter.com. Follow @biotecher to find all the biotwitters in one place (Thanks Attila !) and follow me on @yokofakun.

If you don't know twitter, here is a short video about it:


Pierre

EyeOS: the Web Desktop

Bye bye Microsoft: Here is EyeOS :a completely free (Open Source) Web Operating System running from your browser, where anybody can collaborate and expand it , and where the files and softwares are stored on a remote server. I'm not sure that it is a good news for the system administrators.



You can try it at http://demo.eyeos.org/

Nature Scintilla

just like Deepak, I've received an invitation from Euan Adie (thanks Euan) to join the new service from Nature http://scintilla.nature.com/.

Scintilla collects data from hundreds of news outlets, scientific blogs, journals and databases and then makes it easy for you to organize, share and discover exactly the type of information that you're interested in.

For example, you can keep track of life science podcasts, or the latest papers on schizophrenia, DNA methylation or immunology. Interested in physics blogs? Scintilla can help.

Euan is already the author of www.postgenomic.com and the two tools seem to have an identical function at first glance. This also reminds me Aggademia, a tool created and tested by Alf Eaton a year ago.

I just had on overview of this tool but I already I found it interesting to add a pubmed query in my collection of sources. The service is distinct from Connotea and network.nature.com but with those three tools you can create a group, send some invitations (people around me are annoyed with all my invitations) and I hope all of this will be merged in the future.

Shall I use this tool ? I don't know. I already use google-reader , technorati , etc.. to handles my resources, just tell me why I should change.

Science Magazine ? Science Magazine ? Where are you ?


Pierre

SharedCopy: A collaborative tool for annotating web pages

Via TechCrunch: SharedCopy is a collaborative tool for annotating web pages. It takes a snapshot of the current page and uses it for annotations: then the visitors will sees the original page. I've tested it on a paper in pubmedcentral:

http://r3.sharedcopy.com/3n5q941c

Pierre

Web2.0 and Science: A Presentation using SLIDY

(via Sun)Slidy is a purely web based presentation tool that can be displayed in a modern browser. No need to mail slides around the world and clutter email boxes, no need for the recipient to download a huge binary: just send someone a URL to your slide..

I've tested Slidy tonight by writing a short presentation about my thoughts on the web2.0 and science. You can read this presentation at:

http://www.urbigene.com/SCIENCE2.0/science2.html

Pierre

Social Genealogy

From the FAQ: Geni is a unique approach to solving the problem of genealogy, which is the question of how everyone is related. Geni lets you create a family tree through our fun simple interface. When you add a relative's email address, he or she will be invited to join your tree. That relative can then add other relatives, and so on. Your tree will continue to grow as relatives invite other relatives. Each family member has a profile which can be viewed by clicking their name in the tree. This helps family members learn more about each other and stay in touch. Family members can also share information and work together to build profiles for common ancestors. Geni is a private network. Only the people in your tree can see your tree and your profile. Geni will not share your personal information with third parties.

See also, my previous post about how to draw pedigrees using DOT.

Pierre

Share your graph using swivel

Yesterday I found Many Eyes a service used to create and share some graphs to visualize your data, and his morning,Deepak also found Swivel which seems to be a similar product. However wile you have to copy and paste your data in ManyEyes, you can upload a csv file with Swivel.

I tried to create the same graph I did with openeyes and dbSNP yesterday, but I was not able to create a graph which could compare two columns in the same data-set, and moreover swivel doesn't stop to say "Swivel has not started swiveling this data yet. It'll be worth the wait".... and I've not time to investigate this further....


Pierre

Nature Network Reloaded

Nature Network Boston(NNB) is a networking tool for scientists in the Boston area. It was created last year and I was little bit disappointed when I compared it to www.linkedin.com or www.openbc/xing.com.


Today I received this mail from NNB:

(...)
Thank you for setting up the Bioinformatics and Semantic Web groups on Nature Network Boston. I know it's been a while, but I finally have news about the website to report.

At the end of February/early March, Nature Network Boston will become part of a new website called Nature Network, which will be global in scope so we will be inviting scientists from all over the world to use the site. NNB will become a local channel within Nature Network (with local news and events).

Groups will still be there. On Nature Network, they will be labeled as either global or local (Boston-based) in scope. When we go live with Nature Network, all existing groups on NNB will, by default, be labeled a Boston group.

The other new thing going live in early March: each group will get its own discussion forum, so that group members can post messages and respond to each other. I'll send you another email in a few weeks with more details about how to be a moderator in your group forums.



Great ! I'm impatient to see this :-)